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Here's an excellent article about writing college essays, and from a real pro.

A former college-applications adviser reveals the secrets of writing a good essay A former college-applications adviser reveals the secrets of writing a good essay.

In between my other reading, I've found time to slip in a few stories from Neal Gaiman's Death comic book. Such a great storyteller - he has this Goth aesthetic/sensibility going, which I always think is going to annoy me. Yet he wins me over every time. His Sandman stories are the place to start, but this is good stuff.

DEATH Deluxe Edition A New York Times Best Seller!From the pages of Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman's THE SANDMAN comes fan-favorite character Death in a new deluxe hardcover edition collecting her solo adventures!The first story introduces the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every centur...

Just read another interesting book - The Invisible Dragon, by Dave Hickey. Highbrow down to his toes, Hickey goes after the institutions that have made what a work of art is "about" more important than its beauty. His idea: "Beauty is and always will be blue skies and open highway." He makes a good case for it. Apparently, he ruffled some feathers in politically correct academia when the book first came out in 1993; the edition I read has a new essay published last year. Heady stuff, but provocative.

The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded The Invisible Dragon made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty—and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniti...

How cool is this?

In South Korea, 47% of eighth graders are ranked 'advanced.' In U.S.: 7% South Korea's students rank among the best in the world, and its top teachers can make a fortune. Can the U.S. learn from this academic superpower?

Oh, and here's the link to What You're Really Meant to Do.

What You're Really Meant to Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential How do you create your own definition of success—and reach your unique potential?Building a fulfilling life and career can be a daunting challenge. It takes courage and hard work. Too often, we charge down a path leading to “success” as defined by those around us—and ultimate...

The second book is What You're Really Meant to Do by Harvard professor and former Goldman Sachs vice chairman Robert Steven Kaplan. It will work best for people working within a structured business environment, and pinpoints questions someone trying to get ahead and find their fulfillment within a organization would be wise to ask themselves. In terms of structure, it's a fairly conventional self helper - list your skills, your weaknesses, your good narrative, your bad narrative, what you would do if you had 6 months to live, etc.

But one exercise I got quite a bit from was to write about the time of your greatest professional happiness. He suggests really exploring not only the work, but also where you were in your life, how you functioned, what your days were like, and so forth. I got a great deal out of doing that, and it invited me to examine my current situation in terms of what I believed made me happiest. Turns out there were a lot of parallels between my life then and now that I hadn't really appreciated - and that made me happy.

Just read a couple of good self help books. First, the one I found more useful: Steven Pressfield's The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Pressfield, who is the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, identifies Resistance as the great enemy of the creative process - indeed, any aspirational endeavor. In essence, Resistance is self generated and, ultimately, is fear of success. The book is short and pulls no punches, and I found its simplicity motivating.

Pressfield's prescription for success is simple: Show up and do the work, and your diligence will be rewarded with inspiration. Pressfield views inspiration in mystical, quasi-religious terms, which worked for me (but might not for everyone) - he urges you to embrace the mystery of the creative spark, yet gives you a practical roadmap of how to access it. Highly recommended

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul. hat keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do? Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor—be it s...